Expanding the family

[Dean_Salman]

Image Description

I saw this bird by the shore picking up grass for a new nest I assume. With spring here the birds are getting busy. I like the photo because showing that the bird is hard at work. The lighting was not the best, however, I waited for a pose to capture the light coming from the right.

Type of Critique Requested

• Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.

• Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

I was not sure on the crop here, but left it as 2:3. Contrast is a little bit of an issue here. I darken the hillside to try and correct that.

Technical Details

R6m2 RF 100-500 1/4x 700mm f/14 1/250 ISO 1000

[Dennis_Plank]

I like the pose and the nesting material, Dean. The lighting looks pretty reasonable and detail in the bird is good. I’m not sure what the bird’s position was in the original, but if you have more canvas on the top and right you might look at moving the bird into the lower left area with more room on the top and right. The reflection is so broken that I don’t think the water adds much and just a bit would be adequate.

Here’s a modified image to give you a better idea of what I was talking about. In this case I used a content aware crop to add canvas at the top which doesn’t really work well with this background.

You might also dodge the shaded area of the bird a bit to help make it pop from the background a bit more.